I KNEW three boys at school and college who went on to have a sex change – or undergo “gender realignment” as this year’s favoured terminology has it.

As it happens I have never met any of them since but I did read a moving account by one of them of how he had managed to put years of torment behind him by becoming a “she”.

It is good that medical science can help correct what some people deeply feel to be a congenital error in their physical characteristics. And of course, like any other decent human being, I abhor any bullying of those involved.

But there comes a point where pandering to a small band of political activists has gone far enough. If we hadn’t got there already we certainly reached that point yesterday with the news that the Office for National Statistics is considering making it optional to say whether we are male or female when the next census takes place in 2021.

A report written last month but which has only just come to light states that the male/ female question is “considered to be irrelevant, unacceptable and intrusive, particularly to trans participants, due to asking about sex rather than gender”.

It is hard to know where to start on this politically correct gobbledegook but let’s start with the implication that there is a difference between sex, a physical characteristic, and “gender” by which it seems to mean some kind of personal identity.

GETTY

It was feared transgender members of society would be offended if the rules had not changed

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Gender is a grammatical term. Only a couple of decades ago did it come to be adopted for what used to be known as “sex”. As for the attempts of the trans lobby to promote it as a vague term referring to one’s inner identity, which can be changed on a whim, I’m sorry but I’m not going along with it.

In what way is it “irrelevant” to ask us whether we are male or female? The whole point of a census – as indeed is stated on the form, warning us that we will be fined if we don’t fill it in – is to enable the Government to plan ahead for public services. Surely the male-female question is a fundamental part of this because the balance of men and women in society feeds directly into likely future population growth.

It is vital information too, which might give warning of a serious imbalance in the population. If, for example, pollutants in drinking water were suspected of leading to significantly more females than males being born, census data would help us to investigate.

Likewise, census data on sex can bring attention to worrying local imbalances in population caused by migration of large numbers of young men. Whatever your views on the level of net migration we need to know if certain towns are becoming male-dominated and the most reliable way to find out is through census data.

And what about the NHS’ need to plan ahead for gynaecological services, or testicular cancer care? Or the Government’s stated desire to close the “gender pay gap”?

What utter hypocrisy it is for the ONS to describe the male-female question as “intrusive”. This is the same organisation which thinks nothing of asking us our religion, our ethnicity, our earnings and so on.

Every three months for the past year I have been rung up by an ONS researcher undertaking its Labour Force Survey. It hasn’t just been intrusive – demanding how many hours a week I work, where I work etc. – it has also consumed a lot of my time but I have co-operated because I can see the need for reliable national statistics. Now to be told that it would be intrusive to ask me whether I am a man or a woman makes me wonder why I should bother.

There is no word, though, in the ONS report which annoys me more than “considered”. Who considers it to be irrelevant, unacceptable and intrusive to be asked what sex we are? Not the majority of the population, I am certain. What the authors of the report mean is that they have decided what is acceptable and unacceptable and are trying to lay down the law for everyone else.

Transgender brothers who became sisters

Wed, August 24, 2016

Chloe and Jamie O'Herlihy are sisters who used to be brothers. They appeared on This Morning with their mother to discuss how it has affected their family.

Both Chloe and Jamie are currently going through the process of changing gender from male to female

This is the heart of the problem. Public bodies are becoming infiltrated by political activists who aren’t doing what they are supposed to be doing, which is to put into practice the policy of our Government. Rather they are trying to impose their own politics by stealth.

It is happening in education where, as Michael Gove observed, policy is being driven by a “blob” of academics and officials. It is happening in drugs policy, which increasingly seems to be in the hands of people with pro-legalisation sympathies.

Ministers need to clamp down, clear out the activists from these public bodies and ensure that our elected Government, backed by Parliament, regains control of policymaking.

The ONS initiative is the second outrageous piece of kowtowing to the transgender lobby in the past month. An academic at Bath Spa University was prevented from studying people who had had transgender surgery and regretted it – on the grounds that a “politically incorrect” piece of work might damage the university.

Sorry but no. If people are having sex changes and regretting it we need to know. It isn’t “transphobic” to study this phenomenon. On the contrary it is a vital part of giving people as much information as possible before they make a momentous decision which will change their lives.